Vast quantities of scarce metals are being lost from Europe’s urban mine of vehicles, including 20 tonnes of gold each year – and the proportion of critical metals in vehicles is continuing to increase. A database is now being published that charts the metals and facilitates recycling. On 8 March Chalmers researcher Maria Ljunggren Söderman will present the results at IEA’s expert meeting.

With their insensitivity to decoherence what are known as Majorana particles could become stable building blocks of a quantum computer. The problem is that they only occur under very special circumstances. Now researchers at Chalmers University of Technology have succeeded in manufacturing a component that is able to host the sought-after particles.

​A team of scientists, led by Boy Lankhaar at Chalmers University of Technology, has solved an important puzzle in astrochemistry: how to measure magnetic fields in space using methanol, the simplest form of alcohol. Their results, published in the journal Nature Astronomy, give astronomers a new way of investigating how massive stars are born.

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For the third year in a row, the Gothenburg Horse Show is working with Chalmers University of Technology to determine the ultimate jump trajectory for horses. This year, they’ll be measuring the force of the horses’ take-off and landing. That’s never been done before.

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It took several years, but a research team headed by Professor Jens Nielsen at Chalmers University of Technology has finally succeeded in mapping out the complex metabolism of yeast cells. The breakthrough, recently published in an article in Nature Communications, means a huge step forward in the potential to more efficiently produce protein therapies for diseases such as cancer.

​A new method of examining the skin can reduce the number of animal experiments while providing new opportunities to develop pharmaceuticals and cosmetics. Chemical imaging allows all layers of the skin to be seen and the presence of virtually any substance in any part of the skin to be measured with a very high degree of precision.

A SEK 1 billion research initiative is setting Sweden on course to a global top position in quantum technology. The focus is on developing a quantum computer with much greater computing power than today's best supercomputers. The initiative, led by Chalmers University of Technology, has been made possible by an anniversary donation of SEK 600 million from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation.

A Chalmers-led team of astronomers has for the first time observed details on the surface of an aging star with the same mass as the Sun. Alma:s images show that the star is a giant, its diameter twice the size of Earth’s orbit around the Sun, but also that the star’s atmosphere is affected by powerful, unexpected shock waves. The research was published in Nature Astronomy on 30 October 2017.

A flexible detector for terahertz frequencies (1000 gigahertz) has been developed by Chalmers researchers using graphene transistors on plastic substrates. It is the first of its kind, and can extend the use of terahertz technology to applications that will require flexible electronics, such as wireless sensor networks and wearable technology.

​Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology and the Technical University of Denmark have developed a method that makes it possible to map the individual responses of nanoparticles in different situations and contexts. The results pave the way for better nanomaterials and safer nanotechnology and were recently published in the journal Nature Communications.

In healthy people, exosomes – tiny structures secreted by cells to allow intercellular communication – prevent clumping of the protein that leads to type 2 diabetes. Exosomes in patients with the disease don’t have the same ability. This discovery by a research collaboration between Chalmers University of Technology and Astrazeneca takes us a step closer to a cure for type 2 diabetes.

Researchers have discovered a new way to produce high energy photon beams. The obtained energy is a billion times higher than the energy of photons in visible light. These high intensity gamma rays significantly exceed all known limits, and pave the way towards new fundamental studies.

Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology and the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, have found several previously unknown genes that make bacteria resistant to last-resort antibiotics. The genes were found by searching large volumes of bacterial DNA and the results are published in the scientific journal Microbiome.

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​It is time to stop discussing whether electric cars are good or bad. Instead industry, authorities and policy-makers need to work together to make them as eco-friendly as possible. This is the view taken by Chalmers researcher Anders Nordelöf. In a recent thesis, he provides concrete advice and tools showing how life cycle assessment can assist in the development of electric cars.

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Scarce metals are found in a wide range of everyday objects around us. They are complicated to extract, difficult to recycle and so rare that several of them have become “conflict minerals”. A survey at Chalmers University of Technology now shows that there are potential technology-based solutions that can replace many of the metals with carbon nanomaterials, such as graphene.

A pioneering method, developed at Chalmers University of Technology, has demonstrated its potential in a large study, showing that metabolic fingerprints from blood samples could render important new knowledge on the connection between food and health. The study finds that diet is one of the strongest predictors of type 2 diabetes risk in older women.

What risks threaten the entire future of humanity within the next hundred years? And what should we do to protect against them? A group of researchers will take on these questions in the autumn as part of the research programme "Existential risk to humanity" at Chalmers University of Technology and the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.